Crying Child (7 page)

“It wouldn’t work,” I said regretfully. “You couldn’t be cut off from your patients.”

“I could part of the time, if I could get another man here to share my practice. There’s work
enough for two, God knows. And I have so much catching up to do. I haven’t even time to read the journals the way things are, and you can’t give your patients the best possible care unless you keep up to date.”

So that was why he wanted to be marooned in his snug little house—to read medical journals in bachelor solitude.

“If that’s what turns you on,” I said. “Personally, I’d go crazy buried in a place like this all winter.”

“It’s lucky you aren’t then, isn’t it? Come on in, and meet the beasts, as Bertha calls them.”

Knowing I had annoyed him, I followed him across the lawn. I was curious about the beasts; from Mrs. Willard’s tone they might be anything from mice to rattlesnakes. The first of the menagerie was sitting on top of the porch steps. The sheer size of him made me exclaim aloud.

“Heavens, that’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen! What is it, a lynx or something?”

The cat, a brown tabby, had hair almost as long as that of a Persian; it formed a manelike ruff around the smug feline face. The animal gave me a leisurely appraisal; then it rose to its feet, turned, and brought into view a tail so big, so bushy, and so long that it looked like a Cavalier’s plume. My gasp of admiration was the proper response; the cat gave me a coquettish leer over
its shoulder and sat down with its back to me, waving the tail.

“What on earth is it?”

“She,” said Will reproachfully. “The breed is called Maine coon cats. You can see why, though of course the old story that they are a cross between cats and raccoons is nonsense. The two species don’t interbreed.”

“I’ve never seen one like it.”

“They are rare, except in New England.”

“You breed them?” I sat down on the steps. The cat promptly climbed into my lap and sat down, purring so hard that its sides pumped in and out.

“No, I don’t, really. They just keep on having kittens.”

“Yes,” I said weakly. “I see they do.”

Silently and slyly the cats had filled up the yard. There were more coon cats—a red, a silver tabby, a tortoiseshell; two Siamese; a black-and-white shorthair; and an exquisite long-haired creature with blue eyes and dark Siamese markings. Lined up along the path were more commoners—alley cats—in a startling variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. I had barely taken in this display when two dogs came stalking around the corner of the house. One was a terrier; the other, looming over his friend, was a St. Bernard. My head jerked back.

“Good heavens,” I said.

Will scooped the purring sycophant from my lap and pulled me to my feet.

“You might as well see the rest,” he said, with the air of a man who wants to get a bad job over and done with.

At least “the rest” were smaller than the cats and dogs. Two guinea pigs, a hamster, a squirrel, three snakes—one large, two small—and a parrot who, at the sight of me, let out a stream of profanity as colorful as his red-and-green plumage.

“What,” I said. “No partridge in a pear tree?”

“The partridge only comes in for chow.”

I sat down, after a wary glance at the seat of the chair. My suspicions were understandable, but unjustified. The place was surprisingly clean. Neat it definitely was not, but the clutter was an attractive kind of clutter. There were no dirty socks or unwashed dishes, only piles of records, magazines—and cats. The room was big and low-ceilinged. Three of the four walls had built-in bookcases covering all the surface that was not occupied by windows. The fourth wall consisted almost entirely of fireplace—a huge stone structure whose blackened interior testified to frequent use. There were two doors on that wall, side by side. Will had underestimated the number of books—or maybe, I thought, he actually had read all but five hundred of them. Some of the shelf space was filled by a complex assortment of hi-fi equipment.
The twin speakers stood on each side of the fireplace. I glanced at the record albums piled on the table beside my chair. As I might have suspected, Will’s tastes were classical.

Will had left the front door open and it wasn’t long before the animals filtered in. The dogs flopped down on the rug in front of the fireplace. They fixed mournful eyes on Will. The hamster started running madly around in his wheel; it squeaked. The parrot continued to swear, and, as if on signal, eight or nine cats began to mew.

Looking grim, Will carried the parrot, perch and all, out through a door at the back, through which I caught a glimpse of the interior of one of the annexes—a storage area, filled with firewood and cartons. When he returned, the slam of the door reduced the parrot’s voice considerably.

“You don’t have to censor him on my account,” I said. “I’ve heard worse at work, when I made a mistake.”

“It was the volume, not the content I was trying to control.”

“Who did he belong to, a retired sea captain?”

“You’re about a century behind the times. No, he belonged to two old ladies—Ran’s great-aunts. They liked to hear him cut loose. Said he reminded them of their grandfather.”

“They must have been characters.”

“They were. An admirable pair, in their peculiar
way. After Miss Tabitha died this spring, nobody would take poor old Barnaby. His vocabulary was a little too rich. Bertha always hated his guts.”

“So you took him.” I studied my host until he began to fidget nervously. “I’ll bet most of this menagerie came the same way—abandoned animals that would have been destroyed if you hadn’t adopted them. Your bark is worse than your bite.”

“I prefer some animals to some people, that’s all…. What about some beer? Or a cup of coffee?”

“I could stand some coffee. If it’s ready.”

“You’ll get instant.”

“Fine. What I’d really like is to see the rest of the house. Do you realize what you’ve got here? I’ve never seen a gambrel roof on a saltbox before.”

“They aren’t all that rare.” Will opened one of the doors, the one farthest from the fireplace. “Come see the kitchen first. I’ll put the kettle on, and then you can inspect the upstairs while the water boils.”

The kitchen was a strange mixture of the antique and the very modern, with nothing in between. The four-burner electric stove had been added within the last few years, but its predecessor—and understudy, in case of power failures—was a creaky contraption fueled by kerosene. You could cook over the fire, though, I thought, inspecting the big fireplace, which was the reverse side of the one in the living room. You could bake
bread—or try to—in the bake oven set into the chimney. The benches beside the hearth would be nice on winter days, with the sleet pounding against the shuttered windows, firelight flickering on the dark wooden flooring…Rugs, that was what the place needed. Braided rugs out here, to go with the rest of the room; the plain, white-painted mantel needed a row of ornaments, not the obvious copper utensils, but some good early pottery and maybe a pair of pewter candlesticks…. Curtains on the windows, something bright, to cheer up the winter gloom. It would be fun to hand-block the material, copying old designs….

I turned to meet Will’s curious eyes, and felt myself flush slightly. It was a good thing he couldn’t know what I had been thinking. Artistic fervor might be mistaken for—something else. Men were so conceited….

The other door beside the living-room fireplace opened onto an enclosed staircase. Upstairs, there were only two rooms and a tiny hall. Both the rooms had once been bedrooms, but one had been converted into a bathroom and the potentialities of that room made my mouth water. The same back-to-back fireplaces occurred upstairs. Imagine, I thought, a bathroom with its own fireplace; with those paneled cupboards and the sloping eaves….

“Hey.” Will jogged my elbow. “Talk about crazy things that turn people on…. You look like Dracula’s daughter eyeing a juicy victim. Do you by any chance covet my house?”

“What I couldn’t do with it! That bedroom is crying for decent furniture. There are antique shops all over New England. In a couple of years I could…”

“Tear yourself away; I think I hear the kettle whistling.”

As we went down the stairs he said,

“Ran told me you studied art. But I thought you did—you know, advertising, pop art, that kind of thing.”

“You sound as if you prefer that kind of thing.”

“I don’t care for pop art, if that’s what those enlarged soup cans are. But I’ve never been able to understand the passion some people have for old things. The wormier and more ramshackle the better, I gather. I like functional things with nice clean lines. Something you can sit on without falling through it, and eat off without worrying about spilling the coffee.”

“I see what you mean,” I said, looking with unconcealed disgust at the kitchen table. “Only a barbarian would put a green Formica table with shiny aluminum legs in this room. It makes cold shudders run down my back.”

“It holds coffee cups,” Will said mildly, putting them on the tabletop. “What else is a table supposed to do? Milk? Sugar?”

“No, thanks. I don’t see how you can live in this part of the world and not be interested in history.”

“Who says I’m not interested in history? I can tell you more about the China trade than any man on the island. But what does that have to do with antiques?”

“Why, the art of a period, especially the domestic arts, like furniture and dishes and costume—that’s what makes history interesting.”

“You’ll probably enjoy the local museum, then,” Will said. “They’ve got a lot of junk—excuse me—domestic-art objects. The old ladies—the great-aunts—donated some clothes, I remember.”

“I would enjoy it. I’m anxious to see the village; I’ll bet there’s an antique shop, too.”

Will’s face went blank.

“Yes, there is,” he said; from his tone he might have been admitting the existence of a concentration camp. “You’d be better off at the museum.”

I couldn’t imagine why he was so annoyed, but I was feeling fairly kindly toward him at that moment, so I decided not to bug him.

“Tell me about the China trade,” I said.

He smiled a little sheepishly.

“I was bragging. That was my big hobby when
I was a kid. You know it was the East India-China trade that made New England rich, that and the related industries—shipbuilding, the Pacific fur trade, and so on. But I haven’t done any reading in years.”

“It’s such a romantic period,” I said. “The clipper ships, beating around Cape Horn…”

“The clipper ships didn’t come into use until the very end of the period,” Will said. “They were not—”

“Oh, who cares?” I waved away this repressive comment. “It’s still romantic. I was thinking about it last night, when I was up in the cupola at the house. About the Captain, and his wife watching up there, for the ship to come back after all those months and months and—”

“Captain Hezekiah? You haven’t wasted any time, have you? Who told you about the family skeleton?”

“Mrs. Willard mentioned him, but she certainly didn’t suggest that there was anything disgraceful about him. According to her, he was the family hero.”

“He was very successful,” Will said drily. “But you won’t hear any of the good family stories from Bertha. She’s been there so long, she identifies with the Frasers. Come to think of it, I believe there is a remote connection, some great-great-great-ancestor in common.”

“Really?”

“Oh, we’re all inbred,” Will said solemnly. He gave me a look of mock alarm. “Don’t tell me you’re interested in genealogy as well as antiques.”

“Why not?”

“Somehow subjects like antiques and genealogy make me think of the Colonial Dames. Sweet old ladies in flowered hats.”

I had to laugh.

“Sorry to destroy your image, but I am interested in both. After all, me boy, the McMullens were kings of Ireland oncet.”

“They were?”

“No, they were not,” I said, abandoning the brogue. “Peasants, that’s what they were. And proud of it. But just because my granddaddy came over in the hold of a boat doesn’t mean I can’t be interested in other people’s family trees.”

“I think it’s very broad-minded of you,” Will said.

“So do I. You inbred aristocrats, with your receding chins and feeble-minded offspring, are the ones we peasants have to clean up after all the time.”

Will’s hand went up automatically to explore the contours of his chin. Then he grinned.